Sunday with Garrison

On Sunday I saw Garrison Keillor walking down the street in Philadelphia. I didn’t recognize him at first. As we walked towards each other, I just noticed this really tall elderly white man wearing an unbuttoned rain coat on a sunny day with red sneakers and jeans that were at least 2 or 3 inches too short for him. I saw his ankles. He seemed to be trying to read a map or something and was talking as he walked to the female companion that was with him. “Tourist,” I thought and “I wonder if I should offer to help him. No, just mind your business and keep going.” But then I saw that heavy slack jaw, the drooping eyes and the forehead with the unkempt hair that reminded me of the Boris Karloff playing the Frankenstein monster and I knew it was him.


Garrison Keillor has been the radio host of a variety show called A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, or is it PRI I can never tell, for over 30 years and the star of the Robert Altman movie by the same name. Meryl Streep was also in the movie and I love me some Meryl Streep ever since I saw her in Sophie’s Choice. In this movie, even though I fell asleep twice in it, she was the only thing that stopped me from asking for my money back. Well alright, stopped me from thinking about asking for my money back because I probably never would go through with it, I’m not cut like that. But here I was, just after hearing Mr. Keillor on NPR about an hour earlier when I wasn’t sure if I was or wasn’t going to the gym and there he was in front of me, live and in the flesh. I saw my chance to ask him about the format of his show.


A Prairie Home Companion is set in the fictional town of Lake Wobegone where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking as they tell you in the opening of the show. What they don’t tell you is that all the people seem to be really really white and that no other race seems to exist there unless of course it was a group of people that died out or left the town during the fifties for a more liberal clime. I wanted to ask the host if perhaps he didn’t think that since there was no one of color or different culture on his show unless it was western European. I wanted to ask him if he thought that there might be a benign hint of racism on his show; a sort of Donna Reed Show for the New Millennium where everything is perfect and white.

Evidently, I am leaving out the fact that the lead solo singer for the show happens to be black. But since she is also female I am guessing that she is probably paid the least. I am also leaving out that they will also bring on other black artists as long as they are harmless and close to death. But like a good John McCain stump speech, you have to leave out some of the truth if you want to put your point across no matter what that point may be. So of course I will leave that out.

I wanted to ask him these questions but I figured that if I wanted to point out the short comings of his show, get a decent workout done, a little reward afterwards from a bakery and get back home in time for my show (The Amazing Race), I probably would not have time to cover it all. So his education had to go. Besides he is probably a decent enough fellow and I have never heard of him being caught at a Neo-Nazi rally in Minnesota where he has one of his homes and who am I to judge anyway? So I just kept walking and all I wanted to say was that I saw Garrison Keillor on Sunday.